KATE EMERY: Why I DOGE-ed the Tesla bullet and cancelled my EV order years ago

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KATE EMERY: Why I DOGE-ed the Tesla bullet and cancelled my EV order years ago

Rarely do I find myself ahead of a trend.

I thought

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would never catch on.

I only really got into Eminem in 2010, when the enfant terrible was old enough for crow’s feet and a receding hairline.

I wear skinny jeans, no matter how often I hear they’re “cheugy”.

I’m also still not entirely sure what cheugy means.

But I was ahead of the curve — for once — when I cancelled my order for a Tesla nearly two years ago.

At the time Tesla boss Elon Muss had not yet gone full Sieg Heil but his growing tendency to spread fake news and target vulnerable minorities online made me uneasy about driving one of his cars.

Camera IconElon Musk performing his now infamous gesture. Credit: ANGELA WEISS/AFP

I wasn’t under any illusion that depriving Tesla of a ***** would make a dent in Mr Musk’s multi-multi-multi (I could keep going) billion dollar fortune. I just didn’t want strangers to imagine I viewed Mr Musk as anything less than, to borrow a line from WA Premier Roger Cook, a knob.

Today, the decision to lose my deposit and buy a rival electric car instead looks prescient, given Tesla owners are being harassed, abused and seeing the resale value of their cars slump since Mr Musk became entirely embedded in US President Donald Trump’s erratic administration.

Members of the Tesla Owners Australia

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group have shared stories of being harassed, tailgated and even having their cars egged because of what they believe is anti-Musk sentiment.

Bumper sticks declaring I BOUGHT THIS BEFORE ELON WENT CRAZY or THIS TESLA DOES NOT ENDORSE ELON are doing brisk business online.

And *********** Tesla sales are sliding faster than the WA Liberals’ hopes for 2029, down 72 per cent for *********** Model 3 and Model Y since the same time last year. In the same ******* total new car sales were down just 10 per cent.

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In the US Tesla Cybertrucks — not as yet approved for *********** roads — are being keyed, tagged and even smeared with **********, while Tesla dealerships have been the target of arson attacks and demonstrations. Tesla shares are on their longest losing streak in its 15 years as a public company, down about 45 per cent since their post-US election highs.

Not all of Tesla’s woes can be laid at the feet of Mr Musk’s pivot from centre-left businessman, who once boasted about Tesla’s LGBTQI-friendly work environment, to hard-right shill for Mr Trump.

Growing competition from cheaper electric rivals are a factor, as are vehicle quality issues and a broader slump in new car sales.

But Mr Musk’s personal brand is paying the price of his high-profile foray into politics, where he is the face of Department of Government Efficiency cost-cutting efforts that have included masterful gambits like firing the National Nuclear Security Administration specialists who maintain the US’ nuclear stockpile. (DOGE was reportedly last seen hastily trying to re-hire them once it became clear what the agency it had gutted in ignorance actually did.)

If you cannot hear the schadenfreude leaking from every word in this column, I am not sorry to see Mr Musk face some comeuppance for spreading what I consider to be dangerous misinformation and using his platform to encourage the rise of far-right voices, including in Germany where he endorsed a party considered so extreme that even the recently-elected conservative party has refused to have anything to do with them.

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This kind of thinking can be a slippery slope: lift a rock at plenty of multinationals and you are liable to find a writhing mass of maggots.

Most iPhones get assembled in China, where Apple has previously been accused of violating labour laws.

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founder Jeff Bezos has used his ownership of the Washington Post newspaper to suppress pro-Democratic Party voices and amplify pro-Trump ones, while

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itself has been accused of allowing unfair work conditions at its warehouses.

Hugo Boss made uniforms for the damn Nazi Party.

The difference is that Mr Musk spent years making himself part of Tesla’s appeal, establishing an “eccentric genius” mystique in the vein of Iron Man’s Tony Stark — a comparison he has encouraged.

Now that Mr Musk looks less like a superhero and more like Bond villain, to some people, at least, it’s not possible to decouple him from the car brand he made such a success.

Nor is it realistic to expect everyone to be happy to pay $70,000 to be seen driving around in Blofeld’s wheels.

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#KATE #EMERY #DOGEed #Tesla #bullet #cancelled #order #years

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